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On Alert for Red-Light Cameras

Banished by voters in Houston, facing legal challenges in Missouri and working undercover in New York City, traffic-monitoring cameras, promoted as accident-reducing tools by safety advocates and decried as intrusive revenue-generators by opponents, are nothing if not controversial.

The battlefront of photographic traffic enforcement is moving to the dashboard, where an increasing number of gadgets — even built-in systems from automakers including General Motors and Mazda — are alerting drivers to the locations of cameras, which photograph speeders and red-light violators and issue citations.

Camera alerts have long been a feature of portable navigation devices from TomTom, smartphone apps like Waze and radar detectors like the Escort Passport Max. The location of the cameras can come from several sources. Navigation companies constantly update their database of alerts, relying on crowd-sourced driver reports to mark the positions of cameras. The reports are sent to a server using the cellphone app or navigation device’s data connection, and then distributed to other app users.

Cities like Baltimore and Chicago list the locations of cameras online and post conspicuous warning signs at monitored intersections, with the intent of warning drivers about dangerous locations.

“The notion is that showing this information is a deterrent, and that’s a good thing,” said Sachin Lawande, president of Harman International’s infotainment division, which supplies navigation systems to dozens of automakers. “The goal is to get people to be more careful about how they drive.”

Still, some municipalities try to hide the exact positions of the cameras. In New York City, for instance, state law allows for red-light cameras at 150 intersections, but dummy cameras are also installed around the boroughs. This fall, the city installed 20 speed cameras in school zones but would not reveal the locations, and it plans to move them periodically.

Some groups are concerned that drivers will simply avoid areas of photo enforcement — and continue speeding and running red lights.

“There are 12,000 intersections in the city,” said Juan Martinez, general counsel and legislative director of Transportation Alternatives, a nonprofit safety and public transportation advocacy group. “So little of the city is covered that when you alert drivers, you highlight the areas where there isn’t any enforcement.”

Camera locations are often provided in European navigation systems — “absolutely commonplace” is how Paul Mascarenas, chief technical officer at Ford Motor, characterized it. “The majority of our customers are accessing it already through an app,” Mr. Mascarenas added, noting that Ford had been particularly sensitive to the trend as it worked to put more smartphone features in the dashboard.

“The purpose is to slow down and save lives,” said Ogi Redzic, vice president for connected driving at Nokia’s navigation map division, Here, formerly known as Navteq. “It is the objective we all have.”

Photo

The camera alert feature on the Waze app.Credit
Dan Neville/The New York Times

The company supplies maps to customers including BMW and Toyota, and owns Trapster, an app that collects user-reported locations of speed traps, red-light cameras and accidents. The information, offered by Here to carmakers for navigation systems, has become a popular feature in Europe, though interest in the United States has been less enthusiastic.

Telenav, which includes photo enforcement warnings in the navigation app that it offers to carmakers and in the Scout app for individual subscribers, acknowledges that there are strong opinions in the United States about the ethics of supplying enforcement information.

“Definitely, it’s a touchy subject,” said Sooner Heath, a customer solutions manager at Telenav. Camera locations appear as red icons on Telenav’s maps, and the app can be set to sound a spoken alert.

Rather than being an application for people seeking to evade law enforcement, the increased availability of camera information directly from automakers, built into dashboard navigation systems, could help legitimize its use. No longer would it be seen as a scofflaw’s gimmick.

Adding to the usefulness of the alerts is the increased accuracy of the location information, navigation companies say.

“Even a year ago, the quality of the information was not as good,” said Mr. Lawande of Harman. “So people said, what’s the point?”

A version of this article appears in print on December 8, 2013, on Page AU2 of the New York edition with the headline: On Alert for Red-Light Cameras. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe